There has been an ongoing debate among historians over the origins of racial segregation in this country in the decades after emancipation. Every southern state had enacted black codes immediately after the war to keep the former slaves under tight control. After these had been voided by the Union, white southerners began exploring other means to maintain their supremacy over blacks. Southern legislatures enacted criminal statutes that invariably prescribed harsher penalties for blacks than for …showed first 75 words of 390 total…

…showed last 75 words of 390 total…and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced...